Mars Lander - Curiosity

[Airconvent]

http://www.space.com/16265-7-minutes-of ... video.html

A very nice clip on the many innovations and technologies involved in landing the Curiosity lander on Mars..in Aug 2012!

[VeeJay]

A website that's tracking the countdown to the landing ... and also 'landing' parties around the world
http://getcurious.com/

The scheduled time for us here in Singapore is 1:30 PM on Monday, so I guess there won't be any parties happening here

[starfinder]

The scheduled landing of Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity is less than 2 days away!

The rover is right on course for a landing on the surface of Mars (targetted for Gale Crater) at 1:31pm S'pore time on Monday 6 August 2012 (0531UTC).

See here for the latest status updates from NASA:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html
http://www.nasa.gov/rss/msllanding_update.xml

Links here to watching the press conferences (archived and live) on NASA TV online :
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/newsroom/
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/n ... 20730.html

I remember watching the launch from Earth live in November last year. How time flies.

I have some reservations (doubts) about the sky crane landing system though. Hope all goes to plan...

[starfinder]

Another point...

You can watch the simulated current status of Curiosity on NASA/JPL's amazing Java-based app called "Eyes on the Solar System" (Windows or Mac only):
http://eyes.nasa.gov/

Click on the "Curiosity" feature. After the data loads, it will show the current distance, velocity, time to touchdown etc of Curiosity. You could also advance the time to just before Curiosity's entry: click on "Preview" mode and change the date/time to 6 August 2012 at 0500UTC and click on "Submit". If you're impatient, change the time to 0511UTC and watch the entire landing process from any angle/zoom setting (i.e. see the approaching surface of Mars from Curiosity's viewpoint).

After you've finished with the Curiosity feature, click to close the "MSL" (Curiosity) feature and explore the rest of the Solar System (planets, moons of planets, some asteroids and comets (choose by "Destination"), sunlight, space probes etc) as it is right now. For example, you could pan around the Solar System and see where Halley's Comet and Comet Hale-Bopp are now or at some other time. Or go to Jupiter and watch it's Galilean Moons orbit around it at an increased rate, whilst Jupiter itself rotates through night and day. Amazing...

[Airconvent]

Curiosity enters Mars atmosphere at 1330H tomorrow! Good Luck and see you on the Surface !

[Sam Lee]

Live streams now

http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl
http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2

Detailed schedules of EDL
http://www.spaceflight101.com/uploads/6 ... sl_pdt.pdf

[rcj]

landed gd!

[weixing]

Hi,
Congratulation and Well Done!!

Have a nice day.

[Airconvent]

yeah..got the news at 1:45pm today! wow an exquisite marvel of engineering. So many complex steps needed to work together to land it and they did it. Well done Nasa!

[starfinder]

Agree, well done NASA!

A truly amazing feat. To borrow from diving and gymnastics parlance, I think the degree of Difficulty was 9+ out of 10 and their Execution was somewhere near 10. MSL/Curiosity performed the equivalent of something like a triple inverse somersault and landed squarely on all six feet. Give them a gold medal!

Not as if this was easy, since this *was* rocket science.

Here is a photo of Curiosity on its descent into Mars:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/n ... 0806b.html
It's so cute that i would say there's an element of romance about it.

Thanks too to NASA for sharing all their space probe photos. I can still recall watching the news on the Uranus and esp. Neptune images taken by the Voyager probes (Time magazine front cover). Now we await in curiosity what Pluto looks like up close. Just a few years more!